Matt Karmil at Culture Box

The British producer and studio polymath takes us on a trip through electro and divergent techno tropes. Recorded live in Copenhagen.

In the past few years, Matt Karmil has made plenty of great records under his own name, but he’s actually been helping other people make records for even longer. A British-born artist whose initial forays into music and production were fueled by extended bouts of illness that kept him largely isolated from his peers, he eventually found himself working in recording studios as a producer, mixer and session player. Much of Karmil’s adult life has been spent in transit, as he’s logged time in cities like London, Paris, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Berlin and Cologne, quietly making music of his own at each stop. It was in Cologne where he connected with artists like Jens Uwe Beyer and Ada, who heard some of his music and signed him up for releases on their labels (PNN and International Records Recordings, respectively). His debut EP, Reverse Peephole, surfaced in 2013 and was quickly met with widespread support from DJs, setting off a run of releases for labels such as Beats in Space, Idle Hands, Endless Flight and Studio Barnhus. Karmil’s sound often varies wildly from one record to the next — he’s as adept at making solemn house music as fuzzed-out instrumental hip-hop, moody soundscapes or other styles too numerous to list. Yet everything he touches displays a real attention to detail and a clear love of sound, not to mention a predilection for conceptual approaches.